Funding the Tobacco Control Industry Scoundrels

The charlatans do not come cheap.

Smoking Scot pointed me to three links (see his comment on the last post). The first two don’t give much direct information about funding anti-tobacco, but the last one does. The last one concerns Bloomberg. Here is the link:

There is a lot of stuff about how wonderful he is and how he came by billions of dollars. Well, nothing actual about how he went about milking people of their money via manipulations of stock exchanges. From our point of view, that does not matter. What matters is how Bloomberg has used his money to persecute smokers.

The clues lie in this section late on the the wiki about ‘The Bloomberg Philanthropies’:

According to a profile of Bloomberg in Fast Company, his Bloomberg Philanthropies foundation has five areas of focus: public health, the arts, government innovation, the environment, and education.[166]

According to The New York Times, Bloomberg was an “anonymous donor” to the Carnegie Corporation from 2001 to 2010, with gifts ranging from $5 million to $20 million each year.[168]The Carnegie Corporation distributed these contributions to hundreds of New York City organizations,[169] ranging from the Dance Theatre of Harlem to Gilda’s Club, a non-profit organization that provides support to people and families living with cancer. He continues to support the arts through his foundation.[170]

In 1996, Bloomberg endowed the William Henry Bloomberg Professorship at Harvard with a $3 million gift in honor of his father, who died in 1963, saying, “throughout his life, he recognized the importance of reaching out to the nonprofit sector to help better the welfare of the entire community.”[171] Bloomberg also endowed his hometown synagogue, Temple Shalom, which was renamed for his parents as the William and Charlotte Bloomberg Jewish Community Center of Medford.[172]

Bloomberg reports giving $254 million in 2009 to almost 1,400 nonprofit organizations, saying, “I am a big believer in giving it all away and have always said that the best financial planning ends with bouncing the check to the undertaker.”[173]

On July 21, 2011, Bloomberg announced that he would donate $50 million to Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign, the grassroots organization’s efforts to close older coal plants and prevent new ones from being built. The gift, spread out over four years, will come from Bloomberg Philanthropies.[174]

Also in July 2011, Bloomberg launched a $24 million initiative to fund “Innovation Delivery Teams” in five cities. The teams are one of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ key goals: advancing government innovation.[175]

In December 2011, Bloomberg Philanthropies launched a partnership with online ticket search engine SeatGeek to connect artists with new audiences. Called the Discover New York Arts Project, the project includes organizations HERE, New York Theatre Workshop, and the Kaufman Center.[176]

On March 22, 2012, Bloomberg announced his foundation was pledging another $220 million over four years in the fight against global tobacco use.[177]

In January 2013, Johns Hopkins University announced that with a recent $350 million gift, Bloomberg’s total giving to his undergraduate alma mater surpassed $1.118 billion. His first gift to the school was $5 in 1965.[179]

I have often wondered how Bloomberg ‘bought’ the loyalty of the New York City Council. There, above, is spelt out the method – big donations to city councillors’ favourite causes. What chance have e-cigs got against Bloomberg’s prohibition, even if it were true that e-cigs might save lives? Bloomberg was KING OF NEW YORK, in all but name. And I have no doubt that his dynasty continues.

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There are some very curious ways in which these donations are used. Reading the above, you might think that the donations were direct contributions to pay for staff and supplies and stuff, but there are cases where that is not the case. In many cases, the donations are used to raise money from elsewhere. Do you see how clever that is? Bloomberg, or whoever, donates, say, $10,000,000, and that money is used to finance the advertising or whatever to get people to contribute, say, $100,000,000. For example, I gleaned this info from SS’s link to:

Hiring ‘Relationship Managers’

The Midwestern city is home to Caterpillar, the construction-equipment manufacturer. Last year, the company’s foundation contributed $1-million to the United Nations Foundation’s Girl Up campaign, a social-media project that organizes American girls into donor clubs and tells them about challenges faced by young women abroad.

On the heels of Caterpillar’s initial donation to Girl Up, the foundation is looking for a “relationship manager” to work directly with the company to identify causes that could win its support in the future. The foundation plans to add more such specialized fundraisers over the next few years.

And what is the very best source of such funds? The Government, of course! So we might ask who funded ASH ET AL to lobby the Government for funding?

All very, very clever. But it is obvious that the Foundations do not donate these large sums without ‘expectations’. If Bloomberg donates $10,000,000 to be used to raise even bigger funds from elsewhere, he will want to control not only the funds that he has contributed but also the extra funds raised.

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From the above cogitations, we can see why it is that so many of the ‘non-profits’ lie, lie and lie again. It is the only way that they can fulfil their role as fundraisers.

9 Responses to “Funding the Tobacco Control Industry Scoundrels”

That’s where when last year Obama announced his anti-gun law agenda out of the blue Obama has a gun-crime epidemiology study completed 3 days before his open public announcement and it was Bloomys john Hopkins anti-gun sciences dept that did the manipulated study just for that occasion!

Bloomberg’s Indoor Smoking Ban Claims the Life of Prince Charles’s Brother-in-Law
“The Duchess of Cornwall was “utterly devastated” last night by t he death of her brother after he smashed his head on a pavement in New York.
Mark Shand, a legendary adventurer, slipped as he tried to light a cigarette after leaving a nightclub in the early hours.”

“But UN Secretary General Kofi Annan happily bent the rules to accept Turner’s money for anti-smoking purposes. He created a special “Fund for International Partnerships,” reporting directly to himself, to funnel the money. “For example, a 1998 grant made jointly to WHO and UNICEF supports their efforts to promote ‘long-term strategies’ to ensure ‘tobacco-free children and youth'”

There are some interesting facts in that list of contributions. For example, Spain still owes money from last year. Ukraine has not paid a penny (why did it sign up?). Saudi Arabia has not paid a penny. Oddly, Poland owes money from 2006-11, but not from 2012-13. Iceland has paid nothing. Belgium did not pay last year.

I live in New York City. I’ve voted against Michael Bloomberg. I concur with most of your post, but I have to disagree with your statement “…milking people of their money via manipulations of stock exchanges.” I don’t like Bloomberg or agree with most of his opinions, but I have to say that he earned his money honestly (as opposed to many who manipulated stock exchanges).

Back in the 1980’s, at the start of the internet era, Bloomberg had a brilliant idea. Let’s gather all types of financial data about all companies, and sell that information to stock brokers, banks, and other interested parties. The data was available, free to anyone, but time consuming to get. Bloomberg put it all in a computer data base, and if you subscribed to his service, it was yours to look at and analyze however you saw fit. Latest stock prices, scrolling across your monitor in real time. What stock broker wouldn’t love that? (Today anybody on the internet can see this.)

Like spreadsheets, e-mail, and word processing, Bloomberg built a company to sell his idea. Bravo! Lots of people found his services worthwhile and paid his price to access the data.

Bloomberg is expensive. Last I heard, one year access for a SINGLE PC costs $ 24,000.00. Since there are currently about 315,000 subscribers, the accumulation of billions of dollars is quite understandable. And good for Bloomberg – he offered a service and lots of businesses paid his price. They probably paid less than the cost of gathering the data themselves.

It’s 6 AM in New York. I could turn on my TV and watch the Bloomberg Business station. This will tell me what’s happening on the London stock market, and European and Asian markets. It’s a professional operation. Bloomberg also has a business news website and a number of print publications. These are as good (or bad) as the news you get anywhere in the United States.

My point here is, yes Bloomberg is a nut, and he uses his billions to promote his screwball causes – but he obtained those billions by creating a legitimate business. I’ll condemn him (gladly!) where he’s wrong, but I have to say that his billions were honestly earned.

And what is the very best source of such funds? The Government, of course! So we might ask who funded ASH ET AL to lobby the Government for funding?

All very, very clever. But it is obvious that the Foundations do not donate these large sums without ‘expectations’. If Bloomberg donates $10,000,000 to be used to raise even bigger funds from elsewhere, he will want to control not only the funds that he has contributed but also the extra funds raised.

It is immaterial however honest Bloomberg has acquired wealth – to use this wealth to impose his personal believes on a population and further increase his personal wealth is a rather questionable practice which just might land Bloomberg to walk past the crowd on a gate he does not expect. And, I would agree with him: he goes in without stopping.

beo. I’m not saying that Bloomberg makes money for himself from his donations (if that is what you mean). I mean that his money is used as a catalyst to raise money from elsewhere. But, because it was his money which was used to raise the extra money, he would wish to control the use of that money also. A seat at ‘the top table’ would do nicely. But there is also the tax saving aspect of of his foundation which will benefit his estate in due course.